Reflections on a dozen years as editor of Catholic World Report

A week ago, I was in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, at Saint Vincent College, attending the 32nd annual conference of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists. I am not a member of the Society, but I was presented with the Blessed Frédéric Ozanam Award, for social action, because of my work with Catholic World Report. Below is the address that I gave on that occasion.

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Thank you, Awards Committee and the Members of the Board of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists.

Thank you, all of you, for this award, which is humbling. And when I say it is humbling, that is no small thing. My sister Amy, who is here tonight, can tell you that humility has never been my strong suit!

It is a tremendous pleasure and honor to be with you at this beautiful Archabbey, which I have visited once before—more on that in a moment.

A special thank you to my wife Heather, who is manning the Olson complex in the Oregon countryside, overseeing two kids, three horses, two digs, four cats, 26 chickens, and quite a few deer and turkeys. We celebrated 30 years of marriage this June, and all credit goes to her, as she is the truly humble one.

Heather and I entered the Catholic Church in March 1997—the same year that John Paul II beatified Frédéric Ozanam. We were both graduates of Evangelical Bible colleges who had, for a number of reasons—theological, spiritual, personal, historical—began to take a long, hard look at the Catholic Church during our first year of marriage.

That is a long story in itself, and I am currently writing a book about it, but I want to note, in keeping with the nature of this wonderful award, what a tremendous debt I owe to so many great writers and thinkers who, in various ways, guided us to and into the Catholic Church.

One of those authors is St. John the Theologian, author of my favorite book of the Bible: the Fourth Gospel. A few others include St. Ignatius of Antioch, T. S. Eliot, G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy Sayers, John Henry Newman, Flannery O’Connor, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, John Paul II, Joseph Ratzinger, Walker Percy, Jean Danielou, Frank Sheed, and Fulton Sheen.

And my patron saint, St. Thomas Aquinas, whom I selected precisely because he is the sort of humble genius who will always remind this proud simpleton of his proper place. Pray for me, St. Thomas!

As I am sure most of you know, Catholic World Report is owned and operated by Ignatius Press. It was founded in 1991 by Fr. Joseph Fessio, SJ. I had read several Ignatius Press titles on the way to becoming Catholic, as well as CWR and other Ignatius Press periodicals. But I never thought I would end up working for Ignatius Press.

One of my professors in the University of Dallas Master’s program, in which I studied from 1997 to 2000, was Mark Brumley, who at that time oversaw CWR, Homiletic & Pastoral Review, and some other publications for Ignatius Press. Mark taught an exceptional course on the thought of John Paul II, and because he was also a former Evangelical Protestant, like myself, we hit it off immediately.

At some point, I told Mark that I was thinking about writing a short book about the “Left Behind” phenomenon (which was all the rage in the late 1990s) as I (and Amy) had been raised in that particular eschatological jungle, which is also known as premillennial dispensationalism.

In fact, in my only previous visit here to Saint Vincent Archabbey was in 2003, when we lived for a year in Heath, Ohio. I was invited to come over to Saint Vincent to give a talk about my book Will Catholics Be “Left Behind”?, which was the end result of that idea I had pitched to Mark. But while I had envisioned a short book, it turned out to be a 400-page book with 666 footnotes. I’m joking! In truth, it had nearly 800 footnotes, but I still think it would have quite funny to land on 666.

Anyhow, I recall that visit very well, as I had walked over the room where the talk was being held and, after being introduced, opened up my bag—only to realize that I had left all of my notes in my room. So I winged it for about an hour, took questions for another hour, and nobody seemed to notice that I was flying by the seat of my absent-minded pants.

All that said, my work has been deeply intertwined with the work and mission of Ignatius Press, which is a remarkable apostolate. Mark Brumley, who is my direct boss, has been president for many years, and Fr. Fessio, who is now 80-some years young, continues as head editor and is as sharp as a tack, the sort of direct and uncompromising Jesuit that seems to irritate far too Jesuits these days!

And I would be remiss if I failed to note the profound faith demonstrated by Mark and Fr. Fessio, who asked me to take over CWR in late 2011, apparently unaware or unconcerned that I really had no experience in journalism. My educational background, in fact, is split between graphic design, fine art, Scripture, and theology, which means that I am essentially unemployable in the “real world”.

However, I had worked in catechesis from 2000 to 2002 in the Ukrainian Catholic parish—Nativity of the Mother of God—we’ve attended since 1999. I had edited Envoy magazine for a couple of years, and I had created and edited IgnatiusInsight.com for several years, which was an online magazine featuring author interviews and articles by Ignatius Press authors.

While earning my Master’s in Theological Studies, I had a conversation with a young priest—we are about the same age—who is a brilliant theologian and who wrote his graduate thesis on Hans Urs von Balthasar’s theology of anxiety. We were talking about von Balthasar, John Paul II, and Ratzinger, and this priest said: “Carl, those men are rare; we are not. But we can be of great service by helping make their work and thought accessible to ordinary Catholics. That is our work.”

That has always stuck with me. Ever since becoming editor of Catholic World Report, my goal has been to publish news stories, commentary, analysis, reviews, and interviews that are both substantive and accessible, true to the teachings of the Church. I never want to dumb anything down, but I also don’t want to be needlessly esoteric. I don’t have anything against soundbites, in principle—and I readily confess that my preferred form of evil social media is Twitter (or X, as some billionaire renamed it)—but a steady diet of sound bites is hardly sound.

The fact is, I love the written word, and it’s my preferred way of learning, interacting, contemplating, and comprehending. I began reading at the age of three, started collecting books when I was about seven or eight, and I now have the largest private library—30,000 volumes and still growing!—in Elmira, Oregon, which would probably be more impressive if Elmira had a population over a thousand people.

But, in all seriousness, I believe that reading and writing are at the heart of an authentic, humane, and beautiful civilization. After all, the Gospel of John does not begin with: “In the beginning was the podcast, and the short video was with God, and the TikTok post was God.”

I’m being flippant, of course, but does anyone here doubt that there is a real and abiding connection between the decline of literacy and the decline of spiritual depth, between the loss of language and the loss of faith, between the evisceration of words and the struggle to see the Logos, the Divine Word?

When I was thirteen years old, I bought a thick volume of poetry. In the course of dipping in and reading poems here and there, I discovered T.S. Eliot. His poem “Hollow Men”—as despairing and bleak as it was—captured my imagination.

Later, when I read Eliot’s “Ash Wednesday,” I was profoundly moved—even shaken—by reading about the mysterious lady:

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end

And then, a bit later, Eliot writes this about the Logos:

And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

So, Eliot, an American who converted to being English and to then became Anglo-Catholic, had touched the mind and heart of a Fundamentalist kid in Montana, who would eventually become a Byzantine Catholic working for a Jesuit priest who founded a publishing house in order to make available the writings of great Communio and ressourcement writers. God works in wonderful and often amusing ways.

Furthermore, this same kid, having no musical ability—because God had given it all to his sister—would become both a Chesterton fan and a jazz fanatic, despite Chesterton hating jazz!

What is my point?

First, I love being Catholic. My Evangelical Protestant parents, God bless them, taught me to love Scripture and Christ. In the Catholic Church, I have endless means and ways to love the Word. The Divine Liturgy, for me, has been a spiritual anchor; I am deeply indebted to our pastor, Fr. Richard, whose fidelity, wisdom, and good humor are both understated and extraordinary. That is no small gift.

Secondly, the social teaching and action of the Church is rooted in truth—in Him who is The Way, The Truth, and The Life—but it is often the case that truth is best experienced and known through the mystery of beauty. My own conversion was due in part to numerous intellectual searches, but I am now at the point in my life I recognize that Christ, the Lover of Mankind, was always calling me through beauty, especially the beauty of the Theotokos and the Saints, but also so much art, literature, and music that pointed to God, the Source of all beauty.

Finally, if I approached my work as an editor and author as just a matter of reporting facts and events with an orthodox Catholic perspective, it would be decent, but it would not be enough. Filled with divine life, the baptized lay faithful are called to more. In the words of John Paul II, in Christfideles Laici:

Through their participation in the prophetic mission of Christ, “who proclaimed the kingdom of his Father by the testimony of his life and by the power of his world”, the lay faithful are given the ability and responsibility to accept the gospel in faith and to proclaim it in word and deed, without hesitating to courageously identify and denounce evil.

Or, put another way: let us always live in the light of the Triune God, who calls us, loves us, and redeems us.

Blessed Frédéric Ozanam, pray for us!